Youth Knows No Pain
by shockin'blueeyes
Summary: They both survive, because they shouldn't have, and they find each other, because before they couldn't have.


Summary: They both survive, because they shouldn't have. And they find each other, because before they couldn't have.

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This is the first fic I've written in a while so please bear with me while I get the hang of it back.

I based the Enjolras and Éponine in my fic in Aaron Tveit and Samantha Barks because the movie was awesome and I was inspired by them, but the descriptions in the brick and various essays about it (Mario Vargas Llosa's 'La Tentación de lo Imposible' is highly enlightening) were also used.

The song used for this fic is listed at the bottom.

Suggestions and any kind of criticism are fine, really, as long as you explain it and not just spew hate for the sake of it.

Enjoy!

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Disclaimer: I do not own Les Miserables, not one speck of it, and I do not in any way benefit from this, except in the pleasure of making myself (and hopefully other people) cry a bit.

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**Youth Knows No Pain**

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_but if you close your eyes_

_does it almost feel like_

_nothing changed at all_

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Éponine opens her eyes, and the white light blinds her.

She closes her eyes again, but the light comes through her lids anyway. She knows she's not dead, because the pain is too great. Her whole body aches and her chest feels empty and she wonders if it is because of Marius or because she's been shot.

_Marius._

The word shocks her eyes open again, and she flexes her hands at her sides, her fingers uncooperative and stiff.

She had been laying in his arms, the rain falling on them, and she had died. She had felt the life spill down her shirt and into the cobbled street, and so she doesn't understand how she's still alive, white hot pain cursing through her when she tries to move, to turn around, to _see_ where she is.

'Well hello, lovely lady. Awake at last are we?' a voice says from above, and she tries to focus her eyes.

Éponine knows that voice, because she's heard it almost all her life. She remembers a small boy running through Parisian streets, all toothy smiles and dirty clothes, and she remembers an old boy, wiping his bloodied hands on his trousers, his eyes vacant and his hair slicked back.

'Parnasse' she croaks, her eyes finally deciding to cooperate, a handsome face coming into view. She tries to incorporate, but his hand shots out and grabs her shoulder, forcing her back down.

'Ah ah ah, no moving.' She notices she's lying on a dirty old mattress, but she can smell the river Seine, the stagnant and decaying smell of the sun warmed waters. She looks around from her position on the mattress, and she recognizes the peeling paint on the walls, the rickety old chair by the window. She's acutely disappointed to wake up in her parents' house and not behind the barricade, where her heart belongs.

The gamine tries to get up again, and Montparnasse grabs her by the shoulders, trying to still her movements.

'Stay still, 'Ponine, for god's sake!'

But she can't. She can't.

'Where's Marius? What happened at the barri-'

Montparnasse covers her mouth with his hand, more roughly than necessary, but she's used to it.

'The barricade fell this morning. The place is littered with the dead. I must say even I am impressed. The National Guard did a splendid-'

'No!' she surges forward, sitting up, and the pain claims her, seizes up her spine and she fights to keep a hold of consciousness, because she needs to go back. Montparnasse is wrong. She didn't save Marius just for him to die the next morning.

When her vision stops swimming she looks over at 'Parnasse, and he's glaring at her, seemingly giving up on his care duties and all pretensions of softness. His eyebrows are drawn and his lips are a thin line, and she knows he's worried, but won't tell. He never does.

'They'd put you amongst the rows of the dead, silly girl. Babet did the best he could bandaging your wound, but I suggest you stay here until you heal.' He's already looking away from her, and she knows he's itching to go back to rue de la Chanvrerie to alleviate the dead of all they will not need in the afterlife.

'But I have to-'

'You have to nothing. You will obey me and stay here until you're better' he looks at her sharply 'You are still useful to your father and the Patron-Minette'

She doesn't offer him thanks for saving her life. He doesn't ask her to.

The door closing makes the floorboards under her shudder. The midday sun still shines through the window, blinding her, and she closes her eyes again, but she does not lie down.

-.-.-.-.-.-

Enjolras is dying.

He knows this like he knows the revolution failed and all his friends are dead. It's a feeling in his stomach, spreading like twisted shards of ice trough his body, his heart, his soul.

A small child had once thought he knew the meaning of grief, thought he had experienced the full blow of it when his sister, barely older than him, had died, taken by the unforgiving waters of his hometown's pond. Oh, but how wrong he had been.

The presence of death consumes him whole, and he doesn't feel the movement, he doesn't hear the voices. He welcomes death with open arms, and he waits for the last tendrils of consciousness to snap and fade away.

Instead, he is suddenly seized by a shock of pain, and he feels his body, though his eyes are closed and his mind half-gone, jerk and spasm. The pain rides him and he arches up, his spine twisted in agony.

He has failed his friends and he has failed his Patria, and all that's left is death, but even that is being denied to him.

The pain never fades; it just keeps on coming, like waves crashing against the shoreline. He arches up again, and a gentle hand grasps his shoulder.

'_Enjolras, calm down. I need you to lay still'_ Combeferre's voice cuts through his pain like a knife.

'_Come on, you're a marble statue, after all!'_ his ears ring with Courfeyrac's quip.

'But you're dead.' he's talking, his voice raw and broken. He wonders if he's dead yet.

'_Not here' _Combeferre says, and Enjolras tries to open his eyes, fight against the darkness that presses in from all corners, but he can't move. There are breathing sounds around him, warm, alive bodies radiating heat.

'_We're going to get you out of this'_ Joly sounds calm and collected, and it's such a stark contrast to his last whimpering breath Enjolras wants to cry.

A foul-tasting liquid is poured down his throat, and he sputters, his insides igniting. He can almost hear Grantaire's laugh.

There are hands piecing him back together, stitching and mending and sewing him shut, and all the while he can hear Jehan's soft hum somewhere to his right, and Grantaire grasps his hand like he'll never let go.

Suddenly all movement stills, and Bossuet's ever cheerful voice says _'Time to go!'_

No.

He doesn't want them to leave. He wants to leave with them.

'_Wake up, old friend'_ Combeferre says, but his voice is oddly distorted.

A ghost of a breath washes over his ear.

'_You'll be fine, Apollo'_

No. No.

He can feel them disappear, and he scrambles for something to hold on to. There are hands gripping his shoulders and his hands, but he barely feels them now.

'_Don't blame yourself'_ his friends whisper, but it feels like they're shouting.

No. No. _No!_

Enjolras opens his eyes.

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Bastille - Pompeii


End file.
